18 minutes ago, flyinpilot212121 said:

Out of curiosity, why does age matter?

A couple of the age comments were just a response to someone above who implied that maybe their dislike for Discord was because they were an "oldie" of 37 years.  😉

Al

Edited January 10, 20224 yr by ark

There are three things that made me realize the younger generation had left me behind as I just don’t get them (and I’m only 41):

- The popularity of Drake

- Fortnight

- Discord

Conversely less curmudgeonly, I  have no problem using my phone number for two factor authentication, do it all the time.

Edited January 10, 20224 yr by regis9

Reported discord to the European data privacy agency. Collecting unnecessary data is kinda illegal. Enjoy

2 hours ago, DaWu said:

Collecting unnecessary data is kinda illegal.

Using *voluntarily provided* data for 2FA, however... is kinda not. 

Which thing is Discord doing, again?   😁

9 hours ago, SierraDelta said:

Bingo! - and I'm 69, so it's definitely not an age thing 😉

 

 

9 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

And I am 81 and can figure it out. 

 

7 hours ago, flyinpilot212121 said:

Out of curiosity, why does age matter?

Exactly,😏 this thread isn't about "age and Discord" but about using your mobile phone number to get access to a server. 

A phone number requirement is necessary for us as an active Discord server with over 50,000 members, in order to moderate effectively and combat scammers and trolls - it's not something we did without carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages to our community. Phone numbers are solely used to verify that you only have one Discord account, and that you are human and not a bot - nothing else.

 

For those who cannot verify a phone number, our new documentation site should cover almost all frequently encountered bugs and questions, providing solutions to them, in addition to comprehensive tutorials. Important announcements are mirrored on our Twitter and even here on Avsim.

 

Our Discord originally arose as a platform mainly for us developers on the project to discuss development, but grew far larger than we anticipated. For those not too familiar with it, or comparing it to forums - I would say a more apt comparison would be to IRC, as conversation can flow fairly quickly and is separated by channels. For those who need support or have a question, you can get it answered in a matter of seconds or minutes rather than hours/days/weeks on traditional forums. Almost all support questions get addressed - if yours happens to be overlooked for a while, there's no harm in politely asking again/bumping. For less ephemeral methods of communication, we use announcement/progress channels, as well as our Github for tracking issues and features in development.

No way I'm giving discord my phone number. I hope it turns out well for you all who do.

2 hours ago, IcemanFBW said:

A phone number requirement is necessary for us as an active Discord server with over 50,000 members, in order to moderate effectively and combat scammers and trolls.

Thanks for your reply, IcemanFBW. I asked a question, you answered it and that settles it, really. Sometimes life can be so simple. 😉 I now understand phone verification is indeed necessary for FBW. I'll give it another thought and maybe I'll meet you there on Discord one day!

Edited January 11, 20224 yr by tup61

5 hours ago, Fielder said:

No way I'm giving discord my phone number. I hope it turns out well for you all who do.

Thats your right but don't expect much reasonable support these days in the Virtual or the Real world for that matter without your PN.  People expect FBW and when PMDG and Fenix drop their birds (don't even attempt to fly the Maddog X, Leoneardo)  here and folks come here and  ask for support? OK wait for that.

Edited January 11, 20224 yr by jbdbow1970

12 hours ago, DaWu said:

Reported discord to the European data privacy agency. Collecting unnecessary data is kinda illegal. Enjoy

Lol……

6 hours ago, Fielder said:

No way I'm giving discord my phone number. I hope it turns out well for you all who do.

My god. It’s for 2FA. They are not sending you spam or anything. Gosh. 
 

Why don’t you worried guys get a prepaid throw away number then?

Edited January 11, 20224 yr by MySound

3 minutes ago, MySound said:

Why don’t you worried guys get a prepaid throw away number then?

I was planning to do that but now I've heard you may be asked to verify your phone number more often (like when you are on a new device) that idea has gone out of the window: prepaid phone numbers are usually temporary and I don't like to keep that phone active by buying data for it every month only in order to stay on Discord.

Having said that... I might probably use my number for Discord anyway. (Yes, I am weak. 😉 ) I mean, I already gave my number to Google (in order to use Android) so that's a bit like giving your number to the devil first and then hesitate to give it to an angel... 😜

7 hours ago, IcemanFBW said:

Phone numbers are solely used to verify that you only have one Discord account, and that you are human and not a bot - nothing else.

How many times have I heard that line? Once you figure out you can sell the numbers to help offset costs it's all over. But I'm sure you'll fall on a knife before allowing something as capitalistic as that.

 

2 hours ago, jbdbow1970 said:

OK wait for that.

Heard this same type of response before MSFS2020 came out. Everything else will cease to exist once the be-all, end-all flight simulator makes its debut. I doubt Discord will be the end of public or private forums, or the ticket support system.

9 hours ago, IcemanFBW said:

A phone number requirement is necessary for us as an active Discord server with over 50,000 members, in order to moderate effectively and combat scammers and trolls - it's not something we did without carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages to our community. Phone numbers are solely used to verify that you only have one Discord account, and that you are human and not a bot - nothing else.

 

For those who cannot verify a phone number, our new documentation site should cover almost all frequently encountered bugs and questions, providing solutions to them, in addition to comprehensive tutorials. Important announcements are mirrored on our Twitter and even here on Avsim.

 

Our Discord originally arose as a platform mainly for us developers on the project to discuss development, but grew far larger than we anticipated. For those not too familiar with it, or comparing it to forums - I would say a more apt comparison would be to IRC, as conversation can flow fairly quickly and is separated by channels. For those who need support or have a question, you can get it answered in a matter of seconds or minutes rather than hours/days/weeks on traditional forums. Almost all support questions get addressed - if yours happens to be overlooked for a while, there's no harm in politely asking again/bumping. For less ephemeral methods of communication, we use announcement/progress channels, as well as our Github for tracking issues and features in development.

Hi Iceman.  First of all, thank you and also thanks to the rest of the FBW team for their dedicated hard work to this project, especially such a high quality project that is free to use for the community 👍

Regarding the requirement of the phone verification, are there that many trolls and scammers that frequent the FBW Discord channel?  I ask this because the FBW Discord channel is not really a political Discord channel, where I would expect a higher percentage of trolls if the subject of the channel were political or controversial in nature.  

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the number of trolls that enter the FBW Discord channel is probably comparable to other Discord channels. Of course, if FBW has over 50K members, that's still a lot of trolls that can enter the FBW Discord channel.  Having said that though, if FBW has more members and it has more people in the Discord channel, can't more mods be assigned? I assume by now, since we are 1.5 years into MSFS, there are a lot of trusted members in your Discord channel that you can make into mods, or give them power to timeout other members.

Maybe there are other tools in Discord that you can use, such as slowing down the main discussion channel (ie. increasing the time between messages sent) if too many people enter it, which would help the moderators moderate the channel.  Or perhaps there is some way to add a timer to new members so they can't post messages as frequently, which would also help moderators moderate the channel without being overwhelmed.

I ask this because a lot of other Discord channels that are as large as FBW, or even larger than FBW, are able to control the trolls and spammers without phone verification.  They do this with good moderation though and with a bigger team of moderators, and they also utilize the tools provided to them by Discord.  I believe that if the percentage of trolls/spammers that enter the FBW channel is comparable to the other Discord channels with as large of a community or perhaps a larger community, that the FBW Discord channel can be moderated well with a large enough team of moderators, such that we don't need to use phone verification to participate. 

Just my two cents. In any case, the phone verification issue shouldn't overshadow what has been an excellent project that has immensely benefited the MSFS community.  All of us that fly the FBW A320 want to thank you for your hard work over the last 1.5 years!  Cheers and happy new year!

Edited January 11, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

14 hours ago, DaWu said:

Reported discord to the European data privacy agency. Collecting unnecessary data is kinda illegal. Enjoy

You're allowed to collect phone numbers for 2FA purposes under GDPR. It's a massively commonplace practice. I work for an organisation that collects personal data as part of our business dealing with the public so I've had a bit of experience implementing GDPR (it's a pain) and what they're doing meets the GDPR principles as far as I can see:

• They have a legitimate reason for doing this (security) and you're giving consent when you give it to them
• It's fair & transparent what they doing - they explicitly tell you what data they're collating and why so there can't be any confusion on your side
• The purpose is limited - they're just using it for security reasons to keep their channel clean
• The amount of data they're collecting is minimised - they're not harvesting huge amounts of personal data but just enough to meet their security requirements (it may be a little more than some other channels but it's their choice and used by some channels so perfectly valid - you can consent or opt out of joining their channel)
• The data retention period isn't clear but Discord have stated they're GDPR compliant and do purge inactive data after a period of time
• In relation to data integrity & confidentiality it's stated that they can't share this data without your consent
• Discord have appointed VeraSafe as their EEA representative for data protection so it looks like they're being accountable for following GDPR practices

In short, good luck with with the European data privacy agency. I'm sure they'll be all over this for you.

1 hour ago, Twenty6 said:

How many times have I heard that line? Once you figure out you can sell the numbers to help offset costs it's all over. But I'm sure you'll fall on a knife before allowing something as capitalistic as that.

They can't - that would be illegal under GDPR as you have only given consent for your number to be collected for security reasons. It'd probably be fine in the US for a US company to do this for US citizens but under GDPR it'd be completely illegal. If Discord were found to be doing this they'd face a pretty serious fine. Of course some companies will still bend/break the law e.g. Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. and get fined but that's a whole other story as those companies success often depend on being able to closely track their customers interests/habits while I don't think this is applicable to Discord.